ve saved enough money to send for them.
One-fourth of the emigration is on tickets and money furnished by
friends and relatives in the United States.[43]

The immigrants from Italy differ from those from Austria, Russia,
Hungary, and Ireland, in that they are not driven forth by the
oppressions of a dominant race, but as a result of the economic and
political conditions of a united people. This does not indeed exclude
oppression as a cause of expatriation, but it transfers the oppression
from that of one race to that of one class upon another. By far the
larger portion of Italian immigration comes from the southern provinces
and from Sicily, where the power of the landlords is greatest. In these
provinces of large estates held by the nobility, the rents have been
forced to the highest notch, an orange garden paying as high as $160 per
year per acre, and the leases are short, so that the tenant has little
to encourage improvement.[44] In many cases the land is rented by large
capitalist farmers, who raise therefrom cattle, wheat, and olives, and
are prosperous men. But their prosperity is extracted from the miserable
wages of their laborers. The agricultural laborer gets from 8 cents to
32 cents a day through the year and 10 cents to 38 cents through the
summer. Unskilled laborers get 25 cents to 50 cents a day, and such
skilled trades as masons and carpenters get only 27 cents to $1.40 a
day. This wide range of wages corresponds generally with the South and
North, the lowest rates being in the South and the highest toward the
North. In France and England wages are two and one-half times higher
than in Italy, while in Germany they are about 30 per cent to 50 per
cent higher.

Nor must it be supposed that the cost of living is low to correspond
with the low wages. This is largely owing to the exaggerated system of
indirect taxes. Although wheat is a staple crop, yet the peasants eat
corn in preference, because, for a given expenditure, it gives a
stronger sense of repletion. Of wheat and corn meal together the Italian
peasant eats in a year only three-fourths as much as the inmate of an
English poorhouse. Of meat the peasant in Apulia gets no more than ten
pounds a year, while the English workhouse pauper gets fifty-seven
pounds. The local taxes on flour, bread, and macaroni are as high as 10
or 15 per cent of the value, and the state tax on imported wheat is
nearly 50 per cent of its value. The consumption of sugar has